On June 1, 2009, General Motors files for bankruptcy. The natural course of this fourth largest official business failure was forestalled by the auto maker bailout, which progressives would later ballyhoo as a complete success in that investors and businesses would jump on the rescued company — which is what would have happened in an unbailed-out bankruptcy, anyway.
June 1 births include musical geniuses Mikhail Glinka (1804) and Alanis Morissette (1974).
On May 31, 455, the Roman Emperor Flavius Petronius Maximus dies, soon followed by the Vandal sack of Rome. In a system without terms or term limits for rulers, his 78 days at the top of the Western Roman Empire ended as so many did, in violence — in this case by being stoned by an angry mob while fleeing the capital. His body was flung into the Tiber.
Also on this day, Genghis Khan was born in 1162 AD. On a more positive note, other May 31 births include less violent folks such as composer Marin Marais (1656), poet Walt Whitman (1814), philosopher and economist Henry Sidgwick (1838), clergyman Norman Vincent Peale, and actors Don Ameche (1908), Alida Valli (1921), Denholm Elliott (1922), Clint Eastwood (1930), and Brooke Shields (1965).
On May 21, 1979, the White Night riots erupted in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.
On May 21, 1981, Irish Republican hunger strikers Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara die on hunger strike in Maze prison.
On May 20, 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution.
On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, at 7:52 am, on the world’s first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He would touch down at 10:22 pm the next day at Le Bourget Field in Paris.
On May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.
On May 20, 1953, Gen. Henri Navarre assumed command of French Union Forces in Vietnam, decaring, “Now we can see [success in Vietnam] clearly, like light at the end of a tunnel.”
On May 20, 1995, President Bill Clinton permanently closed the two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House to all non-pedestrian traffic as a security measure, calling the move “a responsible security step necessary to preserve our freedom, not part of a long-term restriction of our freedom.”
On May 19, 1795, Josiah Bartlett, a New Hampshire Patriot and signatory of the Declaration of Independence who also served as the state’s governor and Supreme Court chief justice, died.
On May 19, 1897, Oscar Wilde was released from jail after two years of hard labor. In 1891, the Marquess of Queensbury denounced Wilde as a homosexual. Wilde, who was involved with the marquess’ son, sued for libel but lost when evidence supported the marquess’ allegations. Because homosexuality was a crime in England, Wilde was arrested. His first trial resulted in a hung jury, but a second jury sentenced him to two years. After his release, Wilde fled to Paris and began writing The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). Wilde died just three years after his release.
On May 19, 1935, T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, died as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author, and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days earlier. Sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein’s son Faisal as a liaison officer in 1916, Lawrence proving a gifted military strategist, helping the Arabs launch an effective guerrilla war against the Ottoman Turks. After the war, he lobbied hard for independence for Arab countries, appearing at the Paris peace conference in Arab robes.
On May 18, 1989, a crowd of protesters, estimated to number more than one million, marched through the streets of Beijing calling for a more democratic political system. Less than a month later, Chinese troops would forcibly remove protesters from Tiananmen Square, killing an estimated 2,500 and injuring as many as 10,000.
On May 18, 1917, six weeks after the United States formally entered the First World War, the U.S Congress passed the Selective Service Act, giving the president the power to conscript soldiers. Of the almost 4.8 million Americans who eventually served in the war, some 2.8 million were drafted.
On May 18, 1652, Rhode Island passed the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.